The Barefoot Mailmen

Just when I thought (and you, no doubt, hoped) I was finished posting about Obama’s executive order dramatically expanding the scope of federal funding for embryonic stem cell research, I see that there is a small hitch in the administration’s plans.  Apparently for the last several years, Congress has included in spending bills a provision that prohibits the allocated funds allocated from being used in “research in which a human embryo or embryos are destroyed, discarded, or knowingly subjected to risk of injury or death.”   Apparently this provision, humorously dubbed the Dickey-Wicker amendment after its sponsors, was included in the 465-page omnibus spending bill just signed into law by President Obama, which bankrolls federal agencies through September of this year. 

A pair of congressmen (one Democrat, one Republican) have proposed legislation repealing the provision, and I imagine that  happen soon.  Still, it’s another wrinkle to an incredibly important story.   

Here are links to a pair of news reports on the Dickey-Wicker provision, and the New York Times‘s editorial board’s call for its repeal.

And for good measure:  the Washington Post‘s editors on Obama’s executive order, some sharp remarks from Commentary, and an informative op-ed from  the Wall Street Journal by a former deputy commissioner at the Food and Drug Administration titled “Stem Cells and the Truth About Medical Innovation“